Meaning and Hope in Challenging Times

Phil Self, Co-Chair of the PPN South West

As Gita Bhutani pointed out in her blog; ‘The times they are a changing’, the NHS can feel like an uncertain place at the moment.  Large-scale organisational change, financial squeeze and the wider social and political environment are directly impacting on many of us and inevitably affect the environment for us all.  Psychological Professionals in the NHS are often tasked with supporting both service users and their colleagues, whilst managing their own emotional load too. Compassion fatigue, moral injury, and burnout can all compromise service delivery, the experience of work and personal wellbeing.  Of course, this is true of those in leadership positions at every level of the NHS too.

So how can we maintain resilience, compassion and positivity in challenging and uncertain times?  Despite living near the coast in Devon and having surfed and sailed a bit, I am not really a mariner.   However, those that know me will recognise that I often reach for a nautical metaphor.  In this case, I find myself picturing being thrown around in a choppy and unpredictable swell.  Peaks and troughs, uncertain lurches and trying to balance navigation with keeping afloat, seems relevant.  My limited seafaring experience suggests that maintaining sea legs and containing nauseous stomach signals, suggesting a potential sudden lack of personal wellbeing (!) are both helped by keeping eyes on the horizon – the longer-term course and purpose of the journey.  For me at least, keeping sight of meaning and hope in our work is both practically useful and energy sustaining. 

This reminds me of the work back in 2020/21 that led to the publication of the Psychological Professions Vision for England.  This document, which came to be summarised as 5 ‘planets’, each representing a commitment and vision, was derived from a crowdsource methodology that gathered thousands of ideas from psychological professionals across the country and enabled us all to see and rate each other’s contributions.   What emerged was 5 commonly shared goals or ideals, or possibly values:  put people first; help our communities to thrive; unite and increase diversity in the psychological professions; transform and innovate; and make all health and care psychological.  For me, this vision remains a valuable focus point, emphasising meaning in our work.  We have made considerable progress in the last 5 years, particularly in uniting as a diverse professional family, growing our numbers and influence within the NHS.  I see hope amongst the current uncertainties too.  Funding for neighbourhood teams, mental health teams in schools, talking therapies and the forthcoming modern service frameworks all offer opportunities to make further progress towards the vision.  Uncertainty can understandably generate anxiety and a sense of threat, but it can also enable innovation, and “using our evidence and expertise boldly to innovate” was part of our collective vision too.

I am sure we have all seen what a sense of threat and overwhelm can lead to.  Sometimes the horizon is difficult to see in a swell.  However, according to our vision, putting people first involves “kindness, empathy, openness, respect and dignity”.  Perhaps a helpful reminder of the meaning and hope psychological professionals can offer others and ourselves in challenging times.